selenak

Briefly, a few aborted attempts at consumating new canon:

1.) Latest version of Persuasion at Netflix: too ghastly to endure for longer than ten minutes, and that was ghastly enough. Not even fun in a "so bad it's amusing" kind of way.

2.) Mr. Mercedes, tv version of a Stephen King novel I haven't read yet, because Castle Rock put me in a Stephen King mood: starts fine, but then it's revealed the villain is a a dark haired nerdish loner/serial killer living with his mother in an incesteous relatinship with, and look, if I want Norman Bates, I'll watch Psycho or Bates Motel. End of attempt to watch Mr. Mercedes.

3) The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater: no, sorry, I don't care about any of you.

On the bright side,

mildred_of_midgard unearthed some more 18th century diaries and letters for me to enjoy last week, and also I just rewatched the Black Sails pilot for the first time in years and saw I still love my pirate show a lot. . As pilots go, this one introduces a great many characters, perhaps too many for first time watchers to appreciate, but stilll, it's amazing how we get to meet within a single episode: Flint, Silver, Billy Bones, Mr. Gates, Eleanor Guthrie, Durfresne, Max, Anne, Jack, Vane, Richard Guthrie, Randall, Mr. Scott. And how many plot threads are set up: the quest for the Urca gold, of course, but also: Flint considering himself at war with "civilliation" (and no one hisses "civilisation" as disdainfully as Toby Stephens), Eleanor's ambition to succeed as a businesswoman independently from her father, Vane's rivalry with Flint, Max looiking for independent wealth and being in love with Eleanor, Eleanor's and Vane's relationship as exes, the importance of voting and the quartermaster position on a pirate ship, Flint's problem of retaining the loyalty of his men (for which he needs a good quartermaster), Silver reinventing himself to survive.

The pilot also has the not uncommon early installment rough patches - there's far more sex in this episode than the show otherwise has, some of the interactions (like between Jack and Anne) don't yet sound exactly like the relationship later is presented, and Eleanor's debut scene has some really clumsy dialogue. But it's amazing how much thematically important bits are already included - for example, I hadn't noticed before, but when Flint and Billy are at Richard Guthrie's and Captain Hume (English navy guy, therefore this episode's representative of Flint's arch nemesis) comes, and Guthrie tries to pretend Flint and Billy are jiust nice sugar planters coming by, one of the things Hume says is how important shame is for civilisation to succeed. If you know a certain book dedication as revealed in s2, and its deeper meaning, you can see Flint's rage button being pressed right there.

And speaking of Flint's larger issues - the pilot both displays his ability to terrify and fascinate - on the one hand, he gets Billy, who with good reason distrusts and dislikes him as of this episode, to tell a lie on his behalf to the men (re the blank paper) by a combination of force of personality and creating circumstances where the alternative looks worse to Billy; on the other hand, the pilot also shows behind this there's also, as Silver discovers later, the fact he's actually bothered what people think of him (Flint literally asks "what do the men think of me?" in the pilot), and he can't really relate to his crew without an intermediary. Also, he's awfully good at the destructive side, but taking revenge/destroying people isn't all he wants, he also actually wants to build an alternative, and that's a problem because he took that ideal from the Hamiltons, and he needs them - or later Madi - to come up with an utopia to want (as opposed to something to object to).

I was also amused that Silver, who knows that Flint doesn't have the real missing page because he himself has the freaking thing on his person, nonetheless is so compellied by the big spectacle of Silver beating Singleton into a pulp and making Billy confirm Singleton had that page that he needs to check the actual page is still with him. Which fits with what Silver says far, far later, in s3, when he's half delirious with fever and still dealing with his lost leg, about Flint conjuring up that storm. Pilot!Silver is as far from Flint as you can get in the original set up of the show without being a part of the British navy, the only thing he's committed to is looking out for Number 1 at this point, and while the pilot displays his quickness and ability to adopt any information he comes across into the next lie helping him to survive right at the opening with the cook, he's a very far cry from someone you'd see as a possible partner for Flint. It's to the show's and Luke Arnold's credit that the transformation over the next few seasons is sold - and there's a seed there in the aftermath of Singleton's death.Also in what seems to be coming relief, Silver's first encounter with Randall. What Billy says - "we like Randall" and that therefore everyone wants Randall to survive - gets its real pay off in the second season, when Silver works and succeeds at making the crew do a 180° on him and like him as well.

Lastly, having seen Tom Hopper now in three parts - Percival in Merlin, Billy in Black Sails and Luther in The Umbrella Academy, I find he's amazingly versatile but also that Billy Bones is his most impressive part so far. Billy's reactions to Flint - the way he's appalled by him but nonetheless finds himself lying for him - are a big part of what sells the complexity and fascination of Flint in the pilot. And Billy's own transformation from someone who defines himself as one of the men, as looking out for them, to someone who does what he does in later s4 and will thus spend the rest of his life on the run from the crew he once defined himself by is also something very much dependent on Hopper.